Comparison of event-related changes in oscillatory activity during different cognitive imaginary movements within same lower-limb

Abstract

The lower-limb representation area in the human sensorimotor cortex has all joints very closely located to each other. This makes the discrimination of cognitive states during different motor imagery tasks within the same limb, very challenging; particularly when using electroencephalography (EEG) signals, as they share close spatial representations. Following that more research is needed in this area, as successfully discriminating different imaginary movements within the same limb, in form of a single cognitive entity, could potentially increase the dimensionality of control signals in a brain-computer interface (BCI) system. This report presents our research outcomes in the discrimination of left foot-knee vs. right foot-knee movement imagery signals extracted from EEG. Each cognitive state task outcome was evaluated by the analysis of event-related desynchronization (ERD) and event-related synchronization (ERS). Results reflecting prominent ERD/ERS, to draw the difference between each cognitive task, are presented in the form of topographical scalp plots and average time course of percentage power ERD/ERS. Possibility of any contralateral dominance during each task was also investigated. We have compared the topographical distributions and based on the results we were able to distinguish between the activation of different cortical areas during foot and knee movement imagery tasks. Currently, there are no reports in the literature on discrimination of different tasks within the same lower-limb. Hence, an attempt towards getting a step closer to this has been done. Presented results could be the basis for control signals used in a cognitive infocommunication (CogInfoCom) system to restore locomotion function in a wearable lower-limb rehabilitation system, which can assist patients with spinal cord injury (SCI).